Burne-Jones and Morris had expected Oxford to fulfill their fondest dreams, and it did so far as outward appearances went, being still an almost untouched medieval town. They would spend long afternoons in such "shrines" as Merton College Chapel (fig. 44) or New College cloisters, and Burne- Jones, returning from his "terminal pilgrimage to Godstowe ruins and the burial place of Fair Rosamund," saw so intense a vision of the Middle Ages as he walked beside the river that he had to "throw stones into the water to break the dream." 13 But Oxford was on the brink of change. The railway had already arrived, and the Oxford Act of 1854 would soon begin the overdue process of modernizing the university, sweeping away old statutes, depriving the clergy of their monopoly on fellowships, and in general implementing an ever-growing secularization. Nor was Oxford any longer throbbing with Tractarian excitement. It was now eight years since Newman's secession, and the inevitable reaction had set in. Some colleges were experiencing a lively liberal revival; elsewhere, as Matthew Arnold observed in 1854, apathy prevailed. To many, like Mark Pattison, the future Rector of Lincoln College who had lived through the turmoil of the Tractarian heyday, the change was a welcome return to sanity, but Morris and Burne- Jones, viewing matters from a different perspective, were bit- terly disappointed. During their first year they were still engrossed in religious affairs, and spent much time planning a conventual order or brotherhood with their friends. Such schemes were not uncommon in the wake of the Oxford movement, Newmans community at Littlemore being the most famous. But by 1854 Burne-Jones was suffering one of those agonizing spiritual crises which the clash of religious and liberal ideologies made so typical of the time. An inter- view with Charles Marriott, Newman's saintly successor at Saint Mary’s, brought little comfort. He seriously considered converting to Rome, and even tried for a commission in the Crimea, with wild thoughts of death on the battlefield. Fortunately this drastic solution was averted when he was turned down on grounds of health.